Lindsay French's CV - Rhode Island School of Design

LINDSAY COLE FRENCH
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Department of History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Rhode Island School of Design
Liberal Arts Division phone: 401-454-6643
2 College Street fax: 401-454-6586
Providence RI 02903
lfrench@risd.edu
EDUCATION
Ph.D.
Social Anthropology, Harvard University
Dissertation Title: "Enduring Holocaust, Surviving History:
Displaced Cambodians on the Thai-Cambodian Border, 1989-1991"
November, 1994
M.A. Cultural Anthropology, University of Michigan, August, 1985
B.A.
with high distinction, American Culture, University of Michigan,
June, 1978
TEACHING
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Liberal Arts Division, Rhode Island School of Design,
2002 to the present
Chair, Department of History, Philosophy and Social Sciences, 2008-2011
Concentration Advisor, Dept. of History, Philosophy and Social Sciences, 2005-2008
Graduate Thesis Advisor in Photography, Sculpture, Industrial Design, Graphic
Design and Teaching and Learning in Art and Design
Undergraduate Thesis Advisor in Development Studies for Brown University
Regular critic in the Department of Industrial Design at RISD
Kyobo Fund Grant to co-teach “Representing the ‘Real’” with Daniel Peltz, Assistant
Professor of Film, Animation and Video, Spring 2006
Assistant Professor of Anthropology,
Liberal Arts Division, Rhode Island School of Design, 1996 to 2002
McKennan Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow,
Dartmouth College Department of Anthropology, 1995-96
Tutor, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 1993/94
Teaching Assistant,
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 1988-93
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1980-83
Undergraduate Honors Thesis Advisor,
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 1991-94

Undergraduate Advisor, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 1992-94
Writing Tutor,
Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University, 1987-89
The Writing Center, University of Michigan, College of Literature, Science & Arts,
1980-83
PUBLICATIONS
Commentary on “Cultures of Trauma”, a special section IN: Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry,
(28:2) June 2004 (pp. 211-220).
“Exhibiting Terror” IN: Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights. Mark Bradley and
Patrice Petro, eds. Rutgers University Press, June 2002 (pp.131-155).
“From Politics to Economics at the Thai-Cambodian Border: Plus Ça Change ....” IN:
International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, (15:2), Spring 2002 (pp. 427-470).
“Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat” IN: Ethnos (64:2) June 1999, (pp. 170-191), a special
issue focused on the circulation of objects and meanings entitled “Objects On The Loose”.
"The Political Economy of Injury and Compassion: Amputees on the Thai-Cambodia Border"
IN: Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, Thomas J.
Csordas, editor, Cambridge University Press, 1994 (pp. 69-99).
Displaced Lives: Stories of Life and Culture from the Khmer in Site II, Thailand. 1990:
International Rescue Committee, Bangkok, Thailand.
RESEARCH: FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
Sabbatical Research, Cambodia, spring 2012. Two projects:
With Peter O’Neill, I began work on a video project documenting the work of Krom Akphiwat
Phum, a progressive and innovative Cambodia community development NGO operating in rural
Battambang province since 1993. Shooting took place in Battambang in February, March and
April 2012. Translation and editing for this project are ongoing. Funding for post-production
costs has been provided by RISD’s Professional Development Grant.
My research on evolving structures of power and authority in Battambang Province focused this
spring on the rapid growth of Korean evangelical churches, in Cambodia in general and in
Battambang in particular. Research began at RISD with Korean students who had been on
Christian missions to Cambodia, and continued with visits to evangelical churches, offices, and
a Bible College in Battambang, and conversations with pastors, lay preachers, and congregants.
Although Cambodia has been a Theravada Buddhist society since the 7 th century, Protestant
Christianity came to Cambodia in the 1920s and evangelicals of many nationalities are active in
Cambodia at present. I am looking at the links between Korean evangelism, the growth of
Korean business in Cambodia, and organized Cambodian labor migration to Korea to
understand the powerful draw of Korean Christianity in particular. This project has received
support from the Liberal Arts Humanities Fund.

Sabbatical Research, Cambodia, 2004 and ongoing. I am engaged in an ongoing investigation
of changing patterns of hierarchy, power, and authority in northwestern Cambodia, close to the
Thai border. The field research for this project focuses on families that have been divided by the
Khmer Rouge, civil war, and its aftermath in Battambang Province. It has been conducted
through the collection of oral histories during five months of my sabbatical in 2004, with followup
interviews over two months 2012. The project builds upon my doctoral research with
refugees from this area, and the work I have done on border trade and interactions between
Cambodians and Thais on both sides of the border in the years since then. It has been supported
by grants from the RISD Professional Development Fund and the Liberal Arts Division’s
Humanities Fund. Research and writing on this material is ongoing.
Research Advisor, Providence, Thailand and Laos, 2003 to the present. Advisor for a film
project revisiting Hmong families from Providence who were the subject of a 1982 documentary
film entitled “The Best Place to Live.” The new film project, produced by FAV Professor Peter
O’Neill and called “Better Places” follows several Providence families to the Midwest,
California, Thailand, and Laos to uncover the ways life has developed and changed for Hmong
in America over the last twenty-five years.
Post-doctoral Research, Thai-Cambodian Border, 1996-1997. Six months of combined library
and field research on the history of Thai-Cambodian border relations, and the significance of
extra-legal cross-border trade. This study was part of a large, multi-national research project
sponsored by the International Center for Ethnic Studies in Colombo, Sri Lanka entitled
"Multiculturalism and Ethnic Coexistence in Asia." Research was funded through a grant from
the Sasakawa Peace Foundation; writing was funded through a Richard Carley Hunt postdoctoral
fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Post-doctoral Resident Writing Fellowship, Program for Cultural Studies, East-West Center,
Honolulu, HI, 1994-5. This fellowship provided a year of support for revisions on my doctoral
dissertation, toward eventual publication
Doctoral Research, Thai-Cambodian Border, 1989-1994. Twenty months of ethnographic
research with Cambodians displaced to the Thai border, on social relations in the aftermath of
great social and cultural trauma. Fieldwork was carried out in 1989, 1990, and 1991 in Site II, a
camp of 180,000. Research was supported by the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental
refugee relief agency. Writing was funded in part with a Charlotte W. Newcombe
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. The dissertation along
with additional research conducted in Cambodia in autumn 1994 and summer 1996 provides the
basis for an expanded book manuscript under consideration at the University of Hawai’i Press,
entitled “The Border Khmer: Between History and Memory”.
Doctoral Study, 1986-94, additional funding for doctoral work included two pre-doctoral
fellowships from the National Institutes of Mental Health, two Foreign Language Areas Studies
Summer Fellowships, and two Teschemacher Travel Grants from Harvard University.
Oral Historian, 1983-1987. The Oral History Center, Cambridge, MA.
Worked on all aspects of several community oral history projects which collected and presented
the life stories of members of Cambridge's diverse cultural communities. Served on the Board of
Directors of the Oral History Center for four years.
RECENT CONFERENCE PAPERS, PANELS, AND INVITED TALKS
Discussant for the panel “Re-Imagining Cambodia” at the Cambodian Studies Conference at
Northern Illinois University, September 2012.

Discussant for the panel “New Forms of Social Organization in Rural Cambodia” at the Annual
Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Honolulu, Hawai’i, April 2011.
“’Dark Dream’: Looking at Photographs of Cambodia”. Invited talk at the Bannister Gallery,
Rhode Island College, on an exhibition of photographic installations by Eva Sutton, Associate
Professor of Photography at RISD, on the subject of contemporary Cambodian experience.
October 2008.
“Cambodia’s Ongoing Crisis”. Presented at a two-day workshop at Harvard University entitled
“Inadvertent Documents New (and Old) Form of Political and Historical Mediation”. This
workshop is part of a multi-year collaborative project called “Signs of Crisis in Southern Asia”
which investigates communicative technologies and contemporary politics in the South and
Southeast Asian post-colonies. April 2005.
“Poverty, Political Instability and Fine Art Patronage: The Political Economy of Temple Looting
in Cambodia.” Presented at a RISD Museum Symposium entitled Relics, Ruins, and Rights:
Who Owns Cultural Treasures ? October 23, 2004.
“Dialogues with ‘Cultures of Trauma.’” Presented at the Medical Anthropology and Cultural
Psychiatry research seminar at Harvard, entitled “Memory, Suffering and Global Security”
October 2003.
“Our History Too.” Essay solicited for the program of “Silence of God”, a new play about
recent Cambodian history, by Catherine Filloux. This play was commissioned by the New
American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, WVA, and was one of four plays that made up
the summer 2002 season.
“‘Outsider Art” in the Aftermath of Violence.” Presented at a workshop on Art, Media and
Violence in Southeast Asia, Harvard University, May 10-11, 2002.
“(Re)-presenting Cambodia in America: Some Notes on Art, Ignorance and Opportunity.”
Presented at “Fact and Fiction in Post-Authoritarian Societies,” a symposium organized by the
Legacies of Authoritarianism Project, Global Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-
Madison, May 2001.
“Tuol Sleng at the MoMA and Other Unlikely Venues: the Ethics of Exhibition in a Digital,
Transnational World.” Presented at the 8th annual conference of the Joint Center for
International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, entitled “Between the Global and the Local: Making Human Rights Claims
in the 20th Century” in April, 2000.
“Secular Power and Buddha Power in Cambodia Today.” Presented at the Harvard Buddhist
Studies Forum’s 1999-2000 lecture series, Harvard University, December 1999.
“Exhibiting Terror.” Guest scholar at the University of Oregon Center for Asian
and Pacific Studies; paper presented at “Violence, Suffering, Image,” a conference sponsored by
the Savage Endowment for International Relations and Peace Studies, May 1999.
“Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat.” Paper presented as part of a panel I co-organized for the
96th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington DC,
November 1997, entitled “Objects At Loose.”
"Border-Crossing: Thailand/Cambodia 1996." Paper presented as part of a panel I co-organized
for the 95th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco,
November 1996, entitled "Border Incidents."

"Battlefields Into Marketplaces: Politics and Trade at the Thai-Cambodian Border." Presented
to the Southeast Asia Program's Brown Bag Seminar, Cornell University, October 1996.
"New Ethnography in Cambodia, Parts I and II." A double panel, which I organized and
chaired, at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Honolulu, April 1996.
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Conducted an external evaluation of the Junior Faculty Training Program, a program of the
Center for Khmer Studies in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation,
August-September 2010. This program sought to strengthen the institutional capacity of
Cambodian universities and the academic capacity of young Cambodian scholars by providing
graduate level seminars in Southeast Asian Studies taught by international scholars over a sixyear
period. The evaluation was conducted at the end of the second funding cycle for the
program, in anticipation of new funding proposals.
Introduced and provided running commentary for a performance of classical Cambodian dance,
produced by Firstworks and performed at RISD by the Angkor Dance Troupe, June 2009.
Presented three lectures on the history of recent and ongoing crises in Cambodia, as part of an
enrichment curriculum on Current Issues in Southeast Asia for K-12 educators, at Primary
Source, a private, non-profit educators resource center in Watertown, MA. May-July 2007.
In conjunction with “The Spirit of Cambodia….A Tribute”, a two month-long series of events
around Providence honoring Cambodian art and artists in Fall 2002, I helped to arrange and cohosted
the screening of five films by Rithy Panh, award-winning French-Cambodian filmmaker,
at the RISD Auditorium. Panh himself came from Paris to attend the screenings and speak about
his films. It was an unusual gathering of students, academics, Cambodian-Americans, and people
who have worked with Cambodians in a variety of contexts over the previous 23 years. The
films were well attended and extremely well received by all constituencies. It was a remarkable
community event, and provided the foundation for future collaborations between RISD and the
event’s co-sponsor, the Cambodian Society of Rhode Island.
In response to a number of critical issues that arose in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in
Washington and New York, I organized a public speaker series for Wintersession 2002 entitled
“Current World Crises: Contexts and Frameworks.” On five successive Thursday nights,
scholars and practitioners came to RISD to discuss the role of the news media in unfolding world
crises, civil liberties in times of war, artists’ responses to great political and social upheavals,
Islam and radical Islam, and the Pashtun culture of Afghanistan.
Served from 1999 to 2001 as advisor and oral historian for “Signs of the Market,” an exhibition
of handpainted Cambodian shop signs, curated by Laurie Beth Kalb, Ph.D., and exhibited at the
Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, March & April 2001. My participation was supported
by a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, which requires humanities
scholars’ participation in all the projects it funds.
Presented two seminars on the history of Cambodian refugees in America at Middlesex
Community College, Lowell, MA as part of an NEH- funded initiative to bring in scholars to
educate MCC faculty about the backgrounds of their refugee and immigrant students, Oct. 1999.
Presented a talk to the Cambridge Hospital Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit on conditions
in Cambodia under Pol Pot and in refugee camps, experienced by people who were eventually

esettled to the United States. The purpose was to provide historical background to the distress
that Cambodian patients presented on their unit. 1997.